How to Cope with Rejection in the Arts
More than 20 filmmakers, novelists, and comic book writers from around the globe weigh in about how to survive the endless rejection that comes with life as an artist
“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”
-Harper Lee
But what does a “develop a thick hide” mean when it comes to rejection in the arts? How does one do it? And are there tricks to prepare yourself for the number of times most of us will be told “no” in our pursuit of our dreams? I certainly didn’t know any when I started out. My only tool was a degree of dumb overconfidence that helped me get through those early years, and I wouldn’t encourage anyone to embrace that kind of attitude. The more I got to thinking about this subject, the more I realized I wanted to hear how other artists have survived rejection over the years. So this July, I asked more than twenty other artists this specific question:
The life of an artist is one of submission to rejection in all its forms. Sometimes this means a rejection letter regarding a manuscript. Sometimes it’s a pass on a screenplay pitch. Sometimes it’s the worst review of your life. Tell me, how have you learned to cope with rejection?
Below, you will find the responses I received. In addition to the variety of mediums these artists work in, they represent a diverse range of voices and cultural backgrounds from across the globe - including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. Hopefully, their perspectives and experiences will be of some help to you as you navigate your own creative journeys.
TOM SCHULMAN (screenwriter, DEAD POETS SOCIETY)
The second feature screenplay I wrote I titled The Flame, and it was inspired by a childhood neighbor who liked to unroll toilet paper all around his bathroom, light one end on fire, then watch the flames move around the room. He grew up to become a very successful psychiatrist. Somehow, this script found its way to a Warner Bros. executive, and I got a call inviting me to come meet him. I was twenty-four, this was my first time ever on a Hollywood studio lot, and I was awed and thrilled.
In his office, the exec offered me a chair, and I thought he was starting with small talk when he asked, “Where are you from?”
“Nashville,” I answered.
“I’ve never been, but I hear it’s nice, and I have a suggestion: Go back.”
I might have muttered, “What?”
“This is one of the worst scripts I’ve ever read. It’s not only a terrible story, it’s an offensive one. I know this seems harsh, but please believe me, I’m doing you a favor. You have no talent.You’ll never make a living in this business. Go back to Nashville.”
He stood up and showed me the door. It literally felt like he’d slapped me, and I left speechless and ashamed. I went back to my apartment and laid down on the floor. I may have cried, but I don’t remember. I didn’t eat dinner. I barely made it to my bed, and the next day I didn’t go in to work. Then something happened. Still in bed, I propped myself up on an elbow and thought about it. The Flame was undoubtedly a terrible screenplay, I could grant him that. But as much as he hated it, he’d actually read the whole thing, and surely that counted for something. And maybe if I could elicit such a strong reaction, perhaps I wasn’t quite the incompetent he said I was. Whatever nonsense I conjured to console myself, it gave me the gumption to try again and I did. The next screenplay I wrote, I sold, but there were many many rejections to follow. But that executive indeed did me a favor. Every rejection after his was a breeze by comparison.
Tom is a U.S.-based filmmaker.
CHRISTINE BOYLAN (showrunner, “AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER”)
Up until very very recently, I viewed all rejection (and I mean all — from like, a barista getting my name wrong to a network buying and then passing on a show I’ve created) as, “I’m not right, my work is not good, I’m not forceful, smart etcetera, etcetera…good enough.” I would beat myself up terrible. But after, let’s call them, “recent events,” or even just to say “times being what they are,” I’m looking around at the overwhelmed human beings making these decisions as overtaxed, overstressed, upset individuals just as harried as I am, and without even the release of creative expression that I have. “Nobody knows anything” is still true - even more so now.
So, I’m a little more relaxed about rejection in the last couple of years. “It’s not going to work at this place at this time” or “this person is terrified for their job and can’t take a chance on anything that isn’t exactly what they interpret as their mandate from their boss, which was also filtered through some kind of vague string of wine-soaked buzzwords at the corporate retreat.”
The world is absurd, what we do is insane. And our creative partners are under the thumb of greedy, weird CEOs who don’t care about whether a show or a movie or a play is effective or not. So, yes, I get upset and frustrated at being “ahead of my time” with a piece or not being able to sell something that would work great because I’m not one of the three dudes that network feels safe buying from — but what am I going to do? I’d suffer just as much rejection in any other field, feel just as much weltschmerz; at least this way I get to create worlds and scenes and lines and sometimes put on plays and run TV shows and very rarely inspire someone in the audience. All I can control is what I create each day. The rest is not up to me.
Kit is a U.S.-based screenwriter. She’ll be joining me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations later this summer.
MAX BORENSTEIN (creator/showrunner, “WINNING TIME: THE RISE OF THE LAKERS DYNASTY”)
I have been writing professionally for over twenty years. It took ten years of getting paid for it before the first thing I had a hand in ever wound up as a “Hollywood movie”. So, at least superficially, I was acquainted with rejection. Or thought I was. I thought I had its number. It is after all axiomatic that there are many more “nos” than “yesses” in The Biz.
That was fine by me. I took pride in my endurance. As long as I got paid for it — in cash where possible, or more valuably some ego-stroking now and then — I always found it tolerable. I kept the faith. Which is not to say some “nos” didn’t leave a sting. But in those years, I’d say my main reaction to rejection was a fast metabolism: hate the note; absorb the note; move on to the next one. Hope sprang eternal. I became both perfect optimist (the next one is going to be The One) and perfect pessimist (the last one stunk, forget it, just be better). This meant internalizing all rejection as a fait accompli, while retaining faith that fulfillment was just over the horizon - if only I keep working.
Ah, the horizon. Fascinating how we see it everywhere we look, but never reach it.
You see: for twenty-something years, I thought rejection was the problem. Success was out there. Critical. Commercial. However you define it. And once I got that? “Whoo-Boy, welcome to the rest of my life!” And here’s the dirty secret: it felt exactly like rejection felt. But worse. Because suddenly, I couldn’t point into the future: “Once I get that, I’ll feel fulfilled!” I had it now. And I felt…the same. Gulp! Yeah, yeah, I know: every religion and spiritual tradition has been warning us about this fact for all eternity - “the outside world can’t do it for you, buddy, seek your happiness within.” But damn. Still comes as a shock. The good news is, if you can get beyond that little existential crisis, freedom belongs to you. You may even remember what you loved about the movies in the first place. Now, don’t get me wrong. It isn’t easy. For me, it took more work to get there than it took me to get halfway good at writing in the first place. Life helps. In the last few years, I’ve lived more life: I lost a marriage; and a parent. The “perspective” I now sometimes glimpse has been hard won. It’s made me an infinitely better writer. I think. But even if it hasn’t, then at least it’s given me the greater gift of knowing there are other ways to be fulfilled.
Max is a U.S.-based filmmaker. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with him here.
DOMINIC NOLAN (author, VINE STREET)
Rejection has always been the natural order of things in my publishing experiences. It is the norm. Editors reject far more manuscripts than they offer on. I spent a decade having novels rejected before my novel Past Life was bought, and in that time, I worked no less diligently on my craft than I do now. I worked no differently to how I have as a published author. I remain of the opinion that some of that early work is better (whatever the hell that means – “fails less” might be a more apt term) than my debut novel, but the margins between a book being published and not are laughably thin and have less to do with “better” than they do with a confluence of fortune, mostly timing and personalities.
And rejection doesn’t stop once you become published. If anything, that’s when it can punch you in the throat even harder. Having published two books, I was taken aback when I made my first attempt at pitching my third (what would become Vine Street, my best received and selling book), and was rejected by my publisher. What would I do now? Again, timing and fortune were crucial factors. I was out of contract, so not beholden to anyone. And at that very moment, a pandemic landed on our heads like a piano and shut us away in our homes. Out of a joyous combination of free time and spite, I wrote Vine Street anyway, and my publisher did buy it once they’d read it.
Three years later, and it came out in France last month, after Rivages bought it. Every other publisher in France (and every other territory we submitted it in) rejected it. My fourth novel, White City, is coming out in November. It was rejected by everyone other than the only person in London who has ever said yes (and who, as we saw with Vine Street, has also said no).
What can we take from this?
Never take rejection personally. It isn’t intended to wound.
Never accept rejection is permanent. You can change people’s minds.
And, most importantly, spite is the great motivator.
Dom is a U.K.-based novelist. His new novel, WHITE CITY, is out later this year.
NICOLE YORKIN (creator/showrunner, “HIT & RUN”)
As my writing partner Dawn recently reminded me, one of the worst and most painful rejections in our career was early on…probably about three years in. We’d been on a short-lived network show that was a rough experience for our creator/showrunner and was canceled after the second episode aired. Said showrunner subsequently went on to create a phenomenally successful series, perhaps one of the most successful of all times. When that show was picked up, we naturally assumed we’d be hired for that one, too. We’d bonded as a staff on the original show. We felt we’d done a good job as story editors and had left the show on good terms with everyone. In those days, cell phones were still the size of an Ipad and everyone used answering machines when they weren’t home. After the new show’s pick up was announced, I spent that week calling into my answering machine every two hours to see if we’d gotten “the call” to come be on staff. This went on for days. Every day it didn’t happen, I had an excuse in my mind to fall back on. Our showrunner was hiring the higher ups first. The network was taking its time approving hires. The showrunner knew we weren’t going anywhere, so there was no rush to snatch us up. Long story longer. The call never came. It was painful. It was devastating, it was humiliating. It felt personal because this showrunner had known us. He wasn’t just some nameless person who’d read a script of ours and rejected us. I obsessed, I mourned, I cried. Dawn and I worried that it was the end of our barely existent writing career and that we’d never get staffed again.
But not long after, we got hired on a different series — not one nearly as good, nor prestigious — and soon got busy trying to survive that one (which was its own shitshow… a story for another day) and eventually, came to the understanding that with any luck, careers were long and serpentine and took paths you’d never ever expect when you were starting out.
One thing I can say with certainty is that Dawn and I have learned over our long career to be resilient. The fact there are two of us has obviously made this easier because there’s always been another shoulder to cry on. But since that first time, we have faced many, many more rejections along the way: shows we weren’t hired on, pilots we wrote that weren’t picked up, and series we created that were canceled. And through all of it, we have always tried to stay focused on one thing – the work. Whether we were getting paid for it – or not. In fallow periods, we have written spec pilots, tried to find IP we could turn into something we would get paid for and talked to other writer friends for inspiration. I remember Richard Dreyfuss (that’s another story) telling us on our first pilot his belief that you should only be an actor if there’s nothing else you can imagine yourself doing in life. I think the same is true for being a TV or screenwriter. Because, even though we’re in a real slowdown right now in our industry, I can say with certainty, it’s never been easy. Not the getting of jobs, nor the writing of scripts, nor the taking of notes, nor your work finally being put out there in the public eye. And that’s not even counting the rejections that led up to getting the job in the first place!
Last month, I was talking to a group of soon-to-be AFI Writing graduates about the profession they’d spent the last two years busting their asses over in order to break into. And as always, I discovered that speaking to these (mostly) young people about their dreams, their aspirations, their inspiration, left me feeling re-energized myself. I told them about the rejection I just described, and a few other memorable ones, such as being forced off our own first series, “The Education of Max Bickford”, by Les Moonves, and then being blackballed at CBS by its president Les Moonves as punishment. And yes, that had been brutal. But it also forced us to leave network TV and venture into the incipient world of cable tv as writers on HBO’s Carnivale, which pretty much led to the rest of our twenty-five plus year career. That’s the received wisdom I could impart to these young writers - my absolute beliefs that every closed door leads to an open one and that true talent will out.
Nicole is a U.S.-based screenwriter. She writers with Dawn Prestwich. You can read my artist-on-artist conversation with the duo here, in which they go far more in-depth into the Les Moonves story.
ANDREA BARTZ (author, WE WERE NEVER HERE)
My sophomore novel, The Herd, came out in late March 2020 - so after getting stellar trade reviews, great PR, and exciting things I never even dreamed of (Urban Outfitters was gonna sell it), it came out to a big sad trombone sound. Bookstores canceled people's preorders, Urban Outfitters closed along with every other nonessential business, and, when things seemed like they couldn't get any worse, a well-known reviewer panned it in a major newspaper. The rejection — both diffuse (global pandemic trumps book marketing) and specific (bad review) — was almost too much to bear.
But instead of breaking down, I poured all my energy into my next book. (I write psychological thrillers, so, conveniently, being in a dark headspace helped rather than hindered progress). My reasoning? The Herd was but one book in a career that'd comprise many, many titles...some would sell well, some would crash and burn, but I wasn't about to give up now. In other words, I figured the only way to get over the splat this book made was to write one that'd make a splash. Miraculously, the stars aligned on my following novel, We Were Never Here: it was a Reese's Book Club pick and an instant New York Times bestseller. Even when it debuted at #3 on the hardcover fiction list, I held onto that same attitude that got me through dark times: This is one book of many. I'm just going to keep writing. I think that attitude is applicable across creative fields when it comes to rejection; you can let the knife wound stop you, or you can tend to it, mourn a little bit, and then move on to the next project, thereby reminding your whole system that your career (and talent!) are much larger than any one project.
Andrea is a U.S.-based author. I encourage you to subscribe to her writing Substack,
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